You misread my point. I wasn't complaining about the strictness, I was stating that it was the reason nobody willingly writes XML or XHTML by hand. The problem

You misread my point. I wasn't complaining about the strictness, I was stating that it was the reason nobody willingly writes XML or XHTML by hand. The problem with strictness is that the world is lazy, and HTML is meant for a much wider set of people than your average general-purpose programming language. That wide group of people may do anything with their markup, and a language that accounts for that will be more successful than one that does not, plain and simple. XML is just fine as a data-interchange format, and I'm fine with it there (though I personally prefer JSON anywhere that it'll fit). It's when humans are introduced into the equation that XML and it's derivatives fall over.